In December, 48 schools and their governing bodies launched an urgent application, securing an interdict stopping the educator cull. The next week several other schools made a similar successful application.
In terms of the orders granted in those applications, the department has to stick to the government-salaried teacher numbers it approved in 2024.
The department has until April to file papers on why the interdicts should not be made final.
Teachers and principals, members of Naptosa which is the second largest teachers union, then also joined the legal fray.
The circular, setting out the government-salaried posts at each school, was sent out in November, a month after the South African Schools Act (Sasa) legislated the annual deadline of September.
According to the governing bodies and the schools, the effect was that many posts were slashed. It meant governing bodies had no time to fundraise or budget for governing body posts to replace these teachers.
It also left those in the “firing line” with uncertainty over whether they would have jobs or would have to reapply to different schools, if there were vacancies.
In her affidavit, Naptosa provincial head Thirona Moodley, said the department was not only acting contrary to Sasa but also to its contractual obligations and public policy which was “detrimental to schools, learners and educators”.
Moodley said according to those agreements, the post establishments of school had to remain constant for a three-year cycle, except if there were significant changes in enrolments or the school was closed permanently.
The present cycle should have continued until the end of December 2026.
She said the department had issued the first circular for post establishment at the end of November and then, a day before schools closed, issued another one. Some schools lost up to nine educator posts.
In response to correspondence she sent to the department, she received an invitation to “attend a meeting with the HOD”, but the HOD did not pitch. Instead the chief director responsible for staffing had conceded the weighting used was incorrect and had also used incorrect data which meant pupils with special education needs who attend mainstream schools had been excluded from the calculations.
Moodley said the mistakes were placed at the door of “lack of trained personnel”.
She said, however, the issues had still not been resolved and this would result in “chaos” when schools reopened this month.
The department, in its opposing affidavit, raised several technical issues, including that Naptosa’s application is not urgent, that it had been fully consulted over post establishments during collective bargaining and the union had recourse to the Education Labour Relations Council.
Beyond that, Hlongwane said most schools were happy with the number of posts they had been allocated. The unhappy schools had put in “contestations” which were being considered and the schools would be informed of the outcome soon.
The school principals were unaffected by the circular and thus had no legal grounds to bring the application.
Naptosa, Hlongwane said, had “preferred an outdated methodology to continue for the mere reason that this is how things were done in the past”.
This was “unreasonable and unjustifiable”.
“Most state schools [more than 5,000] are satisfied with the PPN certificates issued to them and have not raised any contestation.”
Hlongwane said Naptosa appeared to have a “limited understanding” of how weightings were applied and the only impending chaos — as had been claimed — would be the result of the circular not being applied when schools opened later this month.
Any “surplus” educators would not lose their jobs “in spite of severe financial constraints” but would remain employed “while processes of matching them and placing them continues,” she said.
TimesLIVE
TANIA BROUGHTON
www.timeslive.co.za